An ex-Facebook data scientist has surprised legislators and the general public with revelations about the company’s knowledge of alleged Instagram harm to certain minors, as well as her charges of dishonesty in the company’s fight against hate and misinformation. She is now appearing before Congress.
Frances Haugen has issued a broad criticism of Facebook, backed up by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents that she secretly downloaded before leaving her employment as a member of Facebook’s civic integrity section. Haugen has also filed complaints with federal authorities, stating that Facebook’s own research demonstrates that the company multiplies hate, disinformation, and political turmoil, but that the firm conceals this information.
Haugen disclosed her identity in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday night after recent allegations in The Wall Street Journal based on records she gave to the newspaper sparked public outrage. She stated that “Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated that profit comes before safety.”
A 37-year-old data expert from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in business from Harvard is confronting the social media giant with 2.8 billion users worldwide and a market value of nearly $1 trillion. Prior to being hired by Facebook in 2019, she worked for 15 years at organizations such as Google and Pinterest.
At a hearing on Tuesday, Haugen will appear before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection.
The panel is looking into Facebook’s use of Instagram data from its own researchers that could signal possible harm to some of its young users, particularly girls, while publicly downplaying the negative consequences. According to the research leaked by Haugen, the peer pressure caused by Facebook’s famous photo-sharing platform led to mental health and body-image issues, as well as eating disorders and suicidal thoughts in some of the kids who used it.
According to one internal survey, 13.5 percent of teen females believe Instagram makes suicidal thoughts worse, and 17% of teen girls say it makes eating disorders worse.
In the broadcast interview, Haugen remarked, “What’s particularly unfortunate is that Facebook’s own study suggests that when these young women consume this eating disorder information, they become more and more miserable.” “It also encourages people to use the app more frequently. As a result, individuals are caught in a feedback loop where they despise their bodies more and more.”
Last week, as the public PR disaster surrounding the Instagram research intensified, Facebook put its work on a kids’ version of Instagram on hold, claiming that it is aimed mostly at teens aged 10 to 12.
Senators are looking forward to hearing from Haugen.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a member of the subcommittee, told reporters on Monday, “I look forward to asking her follow-up questions about why Facebook hasn’t taken action to correct problems on its platforms, even when its own internal research reveals enormous concerns.” “I’d like to talk about how Facebook’s algorithms favor dangerous and divisive content, as well as how much money Facebook makes off our children.”
The algorithms that control what appears in consumers’ news feeds are in question, as well as how they encourage offensive content. According to Haugen, a change to the material flow in 2018 led to increased division and ill will in a network that was supposed to bring people together. Despite the animosity that the new algorithms stoked, Facebook discovered that they helped people return, a pattern that helped the social media behemoth sell more of the digital ads that drive the majority of its revenue.
Haugen’s complaints aren’t limited to the Instagram scenario. She claimed in the interview that after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, Facebook turned off measures designed to stop misinformation and encouragement to violence, which she claims contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol.
Facebook disbanded the civic integrity unit where Haugen had been working after the November election. That’s when she concluded, she says, “I don’t trust them to truly invest what needs to be put to protect Facebook from becoming dangerous.”
When Facebook executives recruited her, Haugen claims she told them she wanted to work in a division that combats disinformation because she had lost a friend to internet conspiracy theories.
At a hearing last Thursday, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, was slammed by senators on the Commerce Committee. They accused Facebook of withholding negative findings of Instagram and urged that the company commit to making improvements.
Davis supported Instagram’s attempts to safeguard young people who use the service. She slammed The Wall Street Journal’s portrayal of the research findings.
Facebook asserts that Haugen’s claims are false and that there is no evidence to back up the claim that it is the primary source of social polarization.
“We’ll never be absolutely on top of this 100 percent of the time, even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we deploy, even with the tens of thousands of people that we employ to try and maintain safety and integrity on our platform,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of policy and public affairs, said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
Clegg attributed this to Facebook’s “instantaneous and spontaneous method of contact,” adding, “I think we do more than any reasonable person can ask.”
Haugen hopes that by stepping out, she may be able to persuade the government to impose controls on Facebook’s operations. Facebook, like Google, Amazon, and Apple, has benefited from a lack of oversight in Washington for years.
Separately, a large global outage wreaked havoc on Facebook, Instagram, and the company’s WhatsApp messaging tool on Monday, with the disruption only slowly diminishing by late Monday Eastern Time. WhatsApp was operating for some users for a while, and then stopped working. Others found that Instagram worked but not Facebook, and so forth.
Facebook didn’t specify what caused the outage, which started about 11:40 a.m. EDT and was still not fixed six hours later.
